


Living Colour

by Littlebiscuits



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Love, M/M, Painting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 00:44:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16566332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlebiscuits/pseuds/Littlebiscuits
Summary: In which Markus is still working out how to want things for himself.





	Living Colour

Learning how to want isn't always easy. It doesn't always make sense, visualising things which haven't happened yet, but that he'd like to happen, that he wants to happen. Markus isn't always sure where to start. He feels like he's been testing that a lot lately, wanting something but not knowing how to get there.

And then there's this, something he hadn't even known he wanted, until he got here. Until circumstances, choices, and events, led him here anyway.

"I want to paint you." He'd confessed it before he really considered it, or followed the thought to an action, to a want. Simon had smiled, as if Markus had said something ridiculous, but he'd followed him, let Markus take his wrist and lead him.

Only it's different in his head, an idea forming that isn't what he'd meant - at least Markus doesn't think it's what he'd meant. 

But now he wants it more than he knows what to do with.

The studio is a space of his own, an experiment of his own, small and new enough that most of the paint is unopened, the canvases still blank and white. But here the sheets are dragged down onto the floor, a scatter of tins, and tubes, and discarded brushes, not all of them clean. The easel is still set against the wall, unused, and Simon's coat and shirt are draped over a stack of tins. He's still protesting, quietly, in a way that's soft and amused, and not really a protest at all. While Markus pulls him close, and murmurs reassurance, before tumbling him to the centre of the floor, until he's staring up at him. Simon doesn't resist when Markus steals his shoes and socks, he laughs instead, quiet and curious.

"What are you doing? What are you making me do?" His hair isn't quite as perfect now, where gravity has pulled it in fine lines all the way off his forehead.

"Stay there," Markus tells him. "I have to find the right colours."

"This is not how you paint a picture," Simon points out. Though he stays, he stays where Markus put him, and watches Markus gather his water-based paints, and the soft, unused brushes that he'd found just yesterday.

"Maybe not," Markus agrees, easing down to lean over him, knees set either side of his waist, careful with his weight, though he knows that Simon can hold him. "But I was told to follow my artistic vision, I was told to be unafraid to go wherever it takes me."

It's easy, surprisingly easy, to hold Simon still - not with hands, or words, just a look, a look that says please, please let me, I want this - that's all it takes for Simon to go quiet, arms relaxed, expression patient. While Markus chooses a colour, decides where to start, because there's so much empty space that he wants to fill, that he wants to cover. The rising, smooth plane of chest, the curve of a shoulder, the delicate, fragile stretch of throat, the long line of an arm, bent slightly, fingers curled open.

Simon doesn't make a sound under the brush, under the cold trail of it, where Markus leaves tests of colour on his upper arm. Though Simon doesn't turn his head to see the shades, he watches Markus instead.

There's blue (Cerulean) eventually, in long sweeps across where his collarbones would be, curving into the carefully designed hollows and rises there. Markus had originally started the sky in another shade of blue (Heavy Cobalt,) but it was too close, too familiar. It looked too much like Simon was bleeding out on the floor. Markus had immediately swiped it off of him, with the sheet, then his fingers. Though there's still a streak of it in Simon's hair, going stiff as it dries.

The warmth of Simon's skin is thinning the paint slightly, a possibility he'd already calculated for. It runs easily under Markus's thumb, under the brush when he pulls it outwards, darting into thinness at the side, where Simon's chest slopes away, and starts to become lower back instead.

Markus thinks he'll ask if he can make that his canvas at some point too, draw colour over it, sweeps of blue (Sea Foam) and red (Hot Cherry) and green (Sour Lime) down the line of Simon's spine. Drawn up the back of his neck into his hair. He'll ask if he can push it there with his fingers, until Simon looks like art come to life.

Markus leans back, retrieves another tube and squeezes a little onto the palette he's using, just a little, to become the rolling mountains in the distance, purple (Royal Elegance) and white (Winter Orchard), the curve of a rising slope dragging through, over, across Simon's nipple, in a way that makes him gives a curious, questioning sound.

A sound Markus saves, replays, knows that he'll keep, even if the rest of him fills up around it.

"You're wasting paint." Simon sounds so softly reasonable, an observation, a suggestion, never a push. Markus exhales, purposeful, makes it laughter, reaching up to press a blue (Duck Egg) thumb against Simon's mouth, soft under the touch, just the right amount of give, leaving a line behind, drawn down over his lower lip, across his chin. He doesn't know how to stop touching now Simon has given him permission.

Simon's eyes shut briefly at the gesture, before they open again. Simon, who was designed to be unremarkable. But Markus can find no definition of that word that fits him.

"Hush, I'm concentrating," Markus tells him, smile perfectly visible behind the words. It's a lie, or a distraction at least, because the colour is only as fascinating as the planes, and edges, and slopes of Simon, that Markus drags it over. "And I'm struggling to think of better uses for it, at the moment," he admits. 

Simon blinks, placid and obedient, but the edge of his mouth ticks up, in a way that's amused, or fond, or indulgent. Maybe all three. Markus likes to think it's all three - all the expressions, micro-expressions, gestures that Simon makes for him, just for him, catalogued and folded away, kept separate. Markus never thought there'd be so many of them.

The brush moves down, mountains ending, slick wet bristles ruining the fabric that lays low on Simon's waist. Markus stops there, leaving a streak of purple, and soft oval thumbprints of white and blue.

"Can I -"

"You know you can," Simon says simply, as if there's no other answer to any of Markus's questions.

Markus eases paint-spotted fingers into the waist of Simon's pants, opens them and draws them down his legs. Not as efficient as he knows how to be, but still slow enough that he can see every slide of leg, pieces shifting underneath the skin. The way Simon works, the way he moves, is strangely important.

They've been naked for humans - been more than naked, stripped open, cracked apart, exposed - but never for each other, not until now. Markus likes it, in a way that makes no sense. He slides his knees in more slowly, more carefully, feels the way Simon's bare thigh shifts out of the way, makes a space for him. He makes a space for Markus, and encourages him into it.

Markus isn't sure what to do with that, with the simple things that suddenly become complicated and confusing, that he can't help but go over again and again, analyze for details that he missed, reasons why they feel like _so much_. He worries sometimes that it's just him. That you can feel too much, and it will break you somehow.

But Simon's fingers are moving, a strange rhythm against the sheet-covered floor, and he blinks slowly, face open, curious and uncertain at Markus's sudden stillness. His mouth opens, just a little, like he wants to ask a question, but he's afraid to.

Markus spreads a hand, low, where Simon's stomach ends, smooth skin under his fingers, thumb trailing a line down, almost but not quite pressed to the base of his cock, soft and still. Designed to be unremarkable, non-threatening, but still appealing, in case that was necessary, in case that was a required function, a required need. Adult options, in almost every model. Tools to be used.

Simon has somehow managed to acquire a smear of Orange (Sunburst) on his ear, tacky and old, oil instead of water-based, nothing that Markus has used today, and that in some way makes Simon look like he belongs here. Something of permanence, someone who will stay. With him.

He draws two fingers across the gentle dip of Simon's pelvis.

"Which colour?" Markus finds his voice strangely faint, no explanation for it. He thinks he likes that too. "For the water." 

Simon looks surprised, tips his head forward to look at himself, at what Markus has made of him. The colours that open over his skin. Then at the collection of paints he'd gathered in beside them. 

"I'm not sure I could -"

"I want you to choose," Markus tells him. He wants Simon to choose, everything and anything he wants, whenever he can. Markus's life lately seems like a search for reasons to make him, to find what Simon likes, what he wants, what he chooses for himself.

Simon blinks at him, slowly, before turning his head to one side, to consider the paints. He reaches out, fingers skating over the tubes, tilted back against the rack of large, blank canvases, passing over the blues, to settle on a green, slightly iridescent (Mermaid's Tail.)

"That one," he decides, smooth and certain, as if indulging Markus's whims is his new purpose. 

The colour is bright, glossy and strange, and not unremarkable at all. 

It's perfect.

"You're going to glow in the dark," Markus points out, smiling, though he never told himself to. He gathers the paint in, opens it, because how can he refuse?

"And whose fault is that?" Simon says sensibly. His fingers are on Markus's arms now, sliding in the spots of paint that have found their way there, and stretching down to paint him would mean shaking them loose - which leaves him helpless to move. But then Simon smiles, slow and gentle, and Markus is helpless not to.

He holds the palette aside, leans down, curves over him, until he can lay his mouth against the blue paint spread across Simon's, feel the give for himself. A list of details, scrolling like part of him thinks they're important. The temperature of skin under paint, the exact measures of pressure, the angle they meet at, the weight of Markus laid into him. None of it explains the low hum that fills him, the steady constancy of it, like an anchor, like a base he builds himself on. A task completed, a feedback loop of reward, over and over, though he's done nothing to earn it. 

It's just something Markus requires, the lack of which would be detrimental to him. Though he still feels like he's searching for the why, and the how of this. He can't explain it, and he's almost afraid to try, to know how it works. As if he might break it, or overwrite it somehow, by mistake, with his constant checking and re-checking. 

He wants to ask if Simon does it too, if he pulls at it, tries to understand it. If it feels like this to him? If he's afraid sometimes too.

But every time he thinks to ask, every time he finds Simon, expression patient and curious, as if Markus could say anything, confess anything, and Simon would do his best to help, to give him whatever he needed. Markus isn't sure what to do with how easy that feels, like he might take too much, assume too much. Until they're sharing pieces, and that does nothing but leave Markus idly wondering if he could break himself, just to feel it happen.

The palette leaves his hand, falls, and Markus knows there'll be a corona of different colours surrounding it, wherever it fell. He could name them all -

But Simon is pulling him down, fingers slipping in the falling edge of his pants, one hand dry the other tacky-wet against his skin, and Markus doesn't know what colour Simon's fingertips are, he didn't see where they touched.

"You have to feel this," Simon tells him, air drawn in and then out to laugh, hands slipping down, where Markus's skin is warmer, setting it free in slow pushes. "Feel it with me."

Markus loses his own clothes with a laugh, doesn't bother to check that they don't land in the paint.

Simon pulls at him again, gently but insistently, until Markus's own chest is wet, pressed into the slippery almost-warm length of Simon's. Until the painting mirrors itself on his own skin, long drips and lines curving past his waist, into the cradle of their hips where they're pressed together. Before the picture smears to nothing when he pushes down and in, kisses Simon again, the paint on his fingertips drying in Simon's hair, and on the planes of his cheeks, and the curve of his jaw. 

Markus's hand reaches up, fingers curling at Simon's elbow, pulling his arm down to meet his, hands finding each other, and peeling into pale white (Bleached Bone.)


End file.
